50
over 15,000 reams of paper and used over 10,000 eggs.
During this period it was producing up to 3600 cartes-
de-visite of celebrities each day with 4000 subjects being
available. The company’s sales had reached $600,000
by 1866. By 1871 the British Journal of Photography
was describing Anthony as ‘the largest photographic
fi rm in the world.’ It had extensive offi ces and three
large factories.
Photographic cameras and equipment had been
manufactured extensively either directly or by others
for Anthony from the 1850s and the growth of amateur
photography from the 1870s and the introduction of
dry plates encouraged the development of further lines
of camera. Hand and pocket cameras for the amateur
market played an increasing role in the company’s
product lines from the 1880s with the Schmid Detective
hand camera of 1883 being the fi rst of its type. In the
late 1870s Anthony started importing dry plates from
England and started production of its own Defi ance dry
plates in 1880 but the fi rm found it diffi cult to maintain
quality and keep prices low.
Anthony began selling George Eastman’s dry plates
from 1880 with Anthony’s marketing and distribution
network offering Eastman an unrivalled opportunity
to expand his new business. When Eastman started
paper manufacture in a serious way in 1884 Anthony
employed Frank Cossitt who had operated Eastman’s
coating machine to design a similar machine. East-
man severed his business relationship with Anthony
in 1885 and an intense rivalry operated for the rest of
the century with Eastman frequently resorting to law
to restrain Anthony’s activities in sensitised goods
production.
After Edward Anthony’s death in 1888 the company
began to suffer fi nancial diffi culties partly as a result
of the costs of Eastman’s law suits and a severe fi re in
1888 which affected the its manufacturing facilities. In
1891 Anthony concluded a fi nancial arrangement with
Thomas Blair of the Blair Camera Company selling
some assets in return for Blair stock. However, the fur-
ther merging of the two fi rms was restricted by Blair’s
outstanding court cases with Eastman. Other law suits
that involved Blair and Anthony, and Eastman further
strained the company. In 1899 Anthony attempted to
sell its capital stock to Eastman for $268,750 which
Eastman refused and other unsuccessful attempts were
made in 1901, 1904 and 1905.
In March 1900 Anthony established new offi ces
at 122–124 Fifth Avenue, New York In July 1901 it
combined with Scovill and Adams to buy a controlling
interest in the Goodwin Film and Camera Company.
The two rival fi rms formally merged on 23 December
1901 to form the Anthony and Scovill Company which
also brought together other American fi rms controlled
or owned by the two principals. The dominance and
infl uence of the Eastman Kodak Company and the cost
of on-going litigation had convinced both parties that
their strength lay in combining forces. The Ansco trade
name which was used from May 1902 became one of
the best known in the American photographic industry
until the late twentieth century. A major reoganisation
of the business in 1907 changed the business name to
the Ansco Company.
During the twentieth century Ansco continued to try
and compete with Kodak but with limited success. It
merged with General Aniline Works Inc, the American
branch of the German chemical giant I.G. Farbenindust-
rie Aktiengesellschaft, to form Agfa-Ansco in 1928 and
with the outbreak of war it became, in 1943, a division
of the Americanised GAF. The postwar period saw a
continued decline and in 1978 the Ansco name was sold
to W Haking Enterprises of Hong Kong.
Michael Pritchard
See also: Morse, Samuel Finley Breese; Talbot,
William Henry Fox; and Eastman, George.Further Reading
William and Estelle Marder, Anthony, the man, the company, the
cameras. Pine Ridge Publishing Co, 1982.
Reese V. Jenkins, Images & Enterprise. Technology and the
American Photographic Industry 1839–1925, Baltimore: John
Hopkins University Press, 1975.ANTHROPOLOGY
Both emerging in the second quarter of the nineteenth
century, photography and anthropology have had par-
allel histories. Both changed radically in their range
and capability by the end of the century and beyond as
photographic technology became easier and the modern
discipline of cultural anthropology emerged.
The boundaries of anthropological photography are
not easily defi ned in the nineteenth century. Anthropol-
ogy itself was not a discrete discipline but a fusion of
scientists, travellers, folklorists, theologians, linguistics
and archaeologists with a common interest in the study
of mankind’s cultural, social and biological dimensions.
‘Anthropology’ shifted meaning in the course of the
nineteenth century and was used differently in different
national traditions and at different times, terminology
slipping between the terms ‘anthropology,’ ‘ethnology’
and ‘ethnography.’ In France ‘anthropology’ meant
‘physical anthropology’ as developed at the Laboratoire
d’Anthropologie in Paris, whereas in Britain physical an-
thropology was usually called ‘ethnology.’ In Germany,
as in Britain, ‘Anthropologie’ was initially the inclusive
term, ethnography or Völkerkunde being the detailed
description of manners and customs, whereas ‘Ethnolo-
gie’ came to mean ‘folklore,’ however ‘Anthropologie’